By the time a Jersey financial services firm asks for web-agency recommendations, the budget usually exists and the deadline is already moving.
The unanswered questions tend to sit underneath the build:
- Who is the website for?
- What does a stranger need to understand first?
- How do several services, entities or brands fit together?
- What should make the firm's claims believable?
Those questions are easy to postpone because wireframes look like progress. The risk appears later, when the team is reviewing individual sentences inside a structure nobody properly agreed.
These are the seven decisions I would make before asking an agency to design or build anything. If you are not yet sure a rebuild is the right project, start with rebuild or clearer messaging.
The short answer
Seven decisions to settle before briefing a web agency:
- The website's primary job — trust-building in a new market, explaining a new service, or presenting several entities as one business
- The audiences who arrive without your reputation — what they need to establish, and what would make them leave uncertain
- The relationship between group, entities and services — the buyer's understanding, not the legal structure or the org chart
- The first-screen message — what a stranger must understand in ten seconds
- The job of each page — one sentence per page: this page helps [audience] understand [decision] so they can [next step]
- The proof inventory — client names, case examples, licences, jurisdictions, credentials, awards, gathered before design begins
- The approval route — who owns the objective, who approves the architecture, who has final say on copy
Settle these and a good agency has a problem to solve instead of a blank page to decorate.
1. What job does the new website have?
"We need a better website" can describe several different projects.
A firm entering a new market may need the site to build trust with people who have never heard of it. A business launching a service may need qualified prospects to understand a new proposition. A group created through acquisition may need several businesses to feel connected without pretending they are identical.
Pick the primary job first.
Examples include:
- Help an international intermediary understand the group and find the right service
- Give warm referrals enough confidence to arrange a first meeting
- Explain a new service without requiring a director to translate it
- Present several entities as one coherent business
- Recruit senior people into a firm whose reputation is stronger than its public presence
The website can support several outcomes. One of them should govern the structure and the decisions that follow.
2. Who will arrive without the benefit of your reputation?
Established Jersey firms often build their first website for people who already know them.
The visitor has been referred. They recognise the directors. They understand the sector. The website only has to confirm that the firm is real.
Growth changes that.
A new geography, audience or service line brings people who do not share the firm's context. They need the website to do work that reputation and a warm introduction used to handle.
Write down the two or three audiences whose understanding matters most. For each one, ask:
- What brought them here?
- What are they trying to establish?
- What would make them leave uncertain?
- What should they do next?
This is more useful to a web agency than a long list of demographic traits. It describes the actual journey the site has to support.
3. What is the relationship between the group, its entities and its services?
This is often the hardest decision in a financial services website.
The legal structure, the internal reporting lines and the buyer's understanding are three different things. A website that copies the organisation chart may be technically accurate and commercially confusing.
Before anyone draws a sitemap, decide:
- Which name should a new visitor remember?
- Do clients buy from the group, an entity or a specialist service?
- Which services genuinely belong together?
- Where does jurisdiction matter?
- Which legal distinctions need to remain visible?
- Can people and proof be shared across the group?
There is no universal answer. The useful answer is the one that stays accurate while helping a prospective client understand the business.
If this decision remains open, the homepage, navigation, About page and service pages will all inherit the uncertainty.
4. What should somebody understand in the first ten seconds?
Open the current homepage and ignore everything below the first screen.
Can a stranger tell:
- what kind of firm this is
- who it helps
- what it is especially useful for
- where it operates
- why they should keep reading
In the 2026 Jersey Financial Services Digital Presence Report, 43% of the 28 firms reviewed failed this basic clarity test. A cold visitor could not tell what the firm did from the first screen.
The answer does not require a longer headline. It requires a decision about what deserves to come first.
Write the plainest accurate version before trying to make it distinctive. The distinction should come from the firm's real expertise, audience and way of working.
5. What is the job of each page?
A sitemap names pages. A useful site architecture also explains why each page exists.
For every proposed page, write one sentence:
This page helps [audience] understand [decision] so they can [next step].
If the sentence is difficult to finish, the page may be serving an internal owner instead of a visitor.
This exercise also exposes duplication. Three service pages may be repeating the same reassurance. An About page and a group page may be competing to tell the same history. Several legal entities may need one shared people section rather than separate thin pages.
The page job gives the copywriter and designer the same brief. It also makes later review easier: the question becomes "does this page do its job?" rather than "do we like it?"
6. What proof can the website use?
Most financial services websites make substantial claims:
- decades of experience
- specialist expertise
- international capability
- personal service
- complex work handled well
The supporting proof is often missing or left until the end of the project.
Build a proof inventory before design begins:
- named clients where permission exists
- anonymised case examples
- jurisdictions and licences
- assets or structures administered, with clear dates and scope
- director biographies and relevant experience
- testimonials
- awards with awarding body and year
- membership and regulatory information
- original research or published expertise
In the same 28-firm review, 46% showed no testimonials, case studies or awards on their website. Proof deserves space in the architecture. It should not arrive as a late request for logos.
7. Who makes which decisions?
Website projects slow down when everybody can comment and nobody clearly decides.
Set the approval route before the first draft:
- Who owns the commercial objective?
- Who approves the architecture?
- Who checks legal and regulatory accuracy?
- Who consolidates comments from the wider team?
- Who has final approval on copy?
- Which decisions belong to the agency?
Regulatory review is different from rewriting for preference. Both may happen, but they should not carry equal weight.
Ask reviewers to explain what is inaccurate, missing or unlikely to work for the intended audience. A document containing five sets of disconnected tracked changes is not a decision.
What to give the agency
A useful brief can be shorter than most tender documents. It should contain:
- The commercial trigger behind the project
- The website's primary job
- The priority audiences and journeys
- The agreed relationship between group, entities and services
- The first-screen message
- The proposed sitemap and job of each page
- The available proof
- The approval route
- The technical, accessibility and regulatory requirements
- The boundary between strategy, copy, design and development
That gives a good agency something solid to respond to. Their creativity has a problem to solve instead of a blank page to decorate.
Already chosen the agency?
This work still fits.
I work with leadership teams and their existing brand, design and development partners to resolve the website strategy, architecture and copy before the build moves too far.
The website strategy service for Jersey financial services firms explains the division of work, the 30-day process and what the build partner receives.
James Logue is the founder of Clarity Digital, a strategic marketing consultancy based in Jersey. He helps professional services firms bring their website, message and marketing direction up to the standard of the business behind them.
Part of Website Services.